Silly Season Now Open As Links Emerge To Three Unknowns

It seems like transfer silly season is very much open for business as recently Sunderland have been linked with, eyeing, or considering a swoop for three relatively unknown names in the January transfer window. I know things aren't exactly great at the moment, but it's No-effing-vember.

The first of which emerged last week. Admittedly we are late to the party on this one but we've got lives and jobs. Just. Anyway, it's little-known Portuguese midfielder Paulo Tavares.

So little known is the midfielder he has no Wikipedia page, and thus we don't have a great deal of information on him, nor do we really know where Sky Sports plucked the link from. We really don't research anything if you hadn't guessed. Apparently scouts of ours have been spotted at Vitoria Setubal games on two separate occasions though to watch him, and definitely nobody else.

This is of course exactly the type of transfer Martin O'Neill goes for in the January window...

The second name in the pot of random names linked with random teams is Icelandic striker Kolbeinn Sigthorsson, currently of Ajax. At least we can pretend to know something about this guy we suppose. At least he has a reasonable goal scoring record of 8 in 15 games for the Dutch giants, and reportedly caught the eye of Real Madrid and Arsenal as a kid before moving to Holland with AZ Alkmaar.

The problem here lies in that it seems most likely this is agent talk to either secure more playing time, or a move elsewhere having hit a rich vein of form. Lazio are also being linked with him, and the fee reportedly in the region of £4m - Almost the same figure Ajax paid for his services just a year ago.

Again, we know that O'Neill has a fondness for this type of signing doesn't he? What we need is another kid with potential to sit around on the bench or develop along with Ji Dong-Won and Connor Wickham, farmed out on loan.

Next we move to the Irish leagues, in St Patricks midfielder Christopher Forrester. Having had a history of signing players from their such as James McClean, David Meyler and of course we cannot forget Daryl Murphy - as much as we would like to.

So at least this one has a little credence to it. Although that falls down with him being dubbed "The Irish Messi" in some quarters for a series of fine goals for the side. The gangly, creative central midfielder is also attracting interest from West Ham and Everton among others Sky Sports suggest.

At least this one could happen based upon history, although we'll wait and see as to whether it's anything more than a little bit of agent talk.

The last would be Dider Ya Konan. An Ivory Coast international currently with Hannover who has on his reputation a reasonable goal scoring record of 1 in 3 in the Bundesliga. However in the summer it was him basically just saying he wanted to come to the Premier League, and again this is the case this season. Combine that with the fact we can't score, it's an easy one to bring up.

It seems that the silly season is very much open. That's four potential transfers and we're not even in December. Take these with a pinch of salt, we could be in for a long few months.